Antitrust Alert: CACREP’s Counseling Takeover - Part 3

CACREP’s standards: Protecting clients or profits?

May 26, 2025

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*Correction - Alabama reversed their decision to require CACREP accredited graduate degrees for licensure, see the comments for more.

In a world where professionals from psychiatrists to social workers are licensed to do the same thing, talk therapy, what is counseling? And who gets to decide what it means to be a counselor and engage in professional counseling?

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), Chi Sigma Iota, the American Counseling Association (ACA), American Association of State Counseling Boards (AASCB), and about 30 other groups listed in this 2010 document would say that they are the arbiters of Professional Counseling.

Yet these groups are busy limiting who can work in the field while injecting a large dose of multiculturalism and transgender ideology into practice, leaving thousands of practitioners cut off from valuable work opportunities and vulnerable clients at risk of inadequate help or dangerous manipulation.

CACREP may even be breaking antitrust law.

Historical Context

In the document Counseling Futures, which is part futurist soothsaying part self-fulfilling prophecy, luminaries of the still loosely structured field laid out a pathway by which the profession could distinguish itself from social work and psychotherapy. It has become the foundational document defining the character of what CACREP calls Professional Counseling.

At that time, several accreditation bodies were acknowledged in addition to CACREP, including the American Psychological Association (APA), American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT - now COAMFTE), and the Council on Rehabilitation Education (CORE).

Current Actions

Since that time CACREP merged with CORE in 2017. In all following meetings, no other accreditors were present, including a new accreditor, the Masters in Psychology and Counseling Accreditation Council (MPCAC) which was founded in 1995. Attendance to meetings was controled by invitation.

By the time the Counseling Compact, a multistate agreement that allows counselors to work across state lines, was becoming a reality in 2022, CACREP had anointed itself as the preserver of the professional identity. So thorough was its conviction, it sent multiple letters to Compact Committees and openly discussed how the privilege of working through the compact should be limited to practitioners meeting their standards.

It really should be no surprise that in CACREP’s Sept 2023 open letter to the ACA, they point to their accreditation as being foundational to the definition of professional counseling. You can see for yourself in this passage where they specify the second of their 10 demands for how the Compact Committee should manage who is allowed to work based on their definition of “Professional Counselors.”

2. License and regulate Licensed Professional Counselors. Professional Counseling is a distinct profession as evidenced by the hallmarks of a profession: preparation standards & accreditation (CACREP) its own body of knowledge through scholarship (professional Counseling organization journals), assessment of knowledge through an examination (NBCC & CRCC), code of ethics (ACA, AMHCA, & specialty areas of practice), and credentialing (licensure and certification). Therefore, those granted the Privilege to Practice in the Counseling Compact should be licensed as Professional Counselors and not in other professions. (CCC-RC 2/20/23)

CACREP seems to believe that their accreditation is a hallmark of what makes counseling a distinct profession, but is that true? Few members of the public would be able to distinguish between a social worker and a psychologist if they were getting talk therapy, much less between a counselor who was taught at a CACREP accredited graduate program and someone who got a degree in counseling psychology from a MPCAC accredited school.

The ACA’s Inciting Article

As the ACA pointed out in their July 2023 issue of Counseling Today article, “Professional Identity and the Counseling Compact:”

Many states will never require CACREP degrees for initial licensure, and CACREP currently accredits just over half the counselor education programs in the country. That means that about half the counselors are graduates of programs accredited by other bodies: the compact legislation needed to reflect that reality…
The issue of professional identity and the Counseling Compact has been raised by several of the American Counseling Association’s partner organizations, particularly CACREP and Chi Sigma Iota. CACREP has been relentless in its campaign demanding that only people with degrees in counseling be allowed to practice via a privilege. The Compact Commission is being lobbied to “close the loophole that allows non-counselors to be licensed and participate in the compact.”

The ACA continues:

Second, and perhaps more importantly, we need to stop thinking about professional identity as an exclusionary issue: us (counseling program graduates) versus them (non-counseling program graduates). Graduating from a counselor education program where the faculty all have degrees in counselor education is not the only way to develop an identity as a professional counselor. ACA has had several presidents over the years whose degrees were not in counselor education, but they identified as professional counselors and proudly advocated for counselors and the counseling profession.

Unless CACREP is suggesting that past presidents of the ACA were incompetent to practice across state lines, their moves to limit the Compact arbitrary gradschool differences smack of a turf war they want to win, rather than an effort to protect clients and the general public.

Perhaps more to the point,

If CACREPs efforts to get the compact limited to programs that mirror their standard,
And efforts of Chi Sigma Iota and other professional organizations prevent graduates from MPCAC accredited programs from getting licensed in states like North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama* and Florida, or working for the military and using the Compact

Is that Illegal?

Legal Risks - The Sherman Antitrust Act

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits conspiracies that unreasonably restrain trade. Under this law, the following are considered criminal offenses: agreements among competitors to:

fix prices
Fix wages
Rig bids
Allocate customers, workers, or markets.

Limiting competition through the use of exclusive contracts may also be a violation of this act.

Under the Sherman Act, it is also illegal “to monopolize, conspire to monopolize or attempt to monopolize a market for products or services.” An unlawful monopoly is defined as:

When one firm has market power for a product or service, and it has obtained or maintained that market power, not through competition on the merits, but because the firm has suppressed competition by engaging in anticompetitive conduct.

The Department of Justice notes, “Monopolization offenses may be prosecuted criminally or civilly.”

When it comes to the courts, the legal test for collusion looks for:

Concerted Action (e.g., CACREP, ACA, Chi Sigma Iota agreeing to exclude MPCAC).
Unreasonable restraint (e.g., requiring 60 credit hour degrees, thus barring MPCAC graduates without justification).
Lack of public benefit (e.g., no data showing CACREP graduates outperform MPCAC or other graduates).

Conclusion: A Profession at a Crossroads

In a profession meant to heal, CACREP’s iron grip on counseling’s identity risks strangling competition and care. By anointing itself the gatekeeper of “Professional Counseling,” CACREP, alongside allies like Chi Sigma Iota, has pushed for standards—like the 60-credit hour degree—that exclude thousands of qualified counselors, including MPCAC graduates, from practicing in states like Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, working with the military and possibly under the the Compact.

Their 2023 open letter and decades of closed-door meetings, from 1998 to the 2010 Vision, reveal a relentless campaign to limit who can practice, all while injecting divisive ideologies into training.

But is this just professional pride, or an attempt to monopolize the market? The Sherman Antitrust Act looms large, with its prohibition on agreements that restrain trade or create unlawful monopolies. If CACREP’s standards lack evidence of superior outcomes—say, better client care than MPCAC programs—they could be more than exclusionary; they could be illegal. As counselors struggle to work and clients wait for help in a mental health crisis, the question isn’t just who gets to define counseling—it’s whether CACREP’s control is breaking the law.

Coming Soon - Part 4: New Evidence Emerges

In Part 4, we uncover explosive new evidence from a leading advocacy group exposing CACREP’s behind-the-scenes maneuvers. Could their latest documents and insider accounts prove the collusion we’ve suspected all along? Stay tuned to see how this group’s fight for fair licensing could shake the foundations of professional counseling—and maybe even spark a legal reckoning.

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About

Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.

Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.

You can also find my work at Minding the Campus